Tuesday, November 08, 2005

I Suck, and I'll Never Get Any Better I love to play basketball.  I never really played on an organized team except for seventh and eighth grade, and I didn't learn or play enough for that to count in any way.  What little I've learned has been through various pickup games over the years.  Most of the people I play with have a better understanding of the game than I do.  They just know where to go on the court and when to go there.  I tend to just run around like crazy most of the time, and although that can be effective at times, it's most often a source of frustration for my teammates.  They don't know what I'm going to do at any time, and neither do I. I'm overstating the case against me, at least a bit.  The fact is, I do know what to do in some situations.  And although I'm only 5'8", I'm quick and relatively athletic.  And I can dribble a little, shoot a little, defend and pass a little.  I have enough physical skills to be in the games I play in, and sometimes I manage to help my team more than I hurt it. The problem is I know just enough to be dangerous.  I manage to get open shots, but I can't make them.  I can get to loose balls or steal passes and get down the court, but then I make a bad decision or miss a layup.  People who know their limitations don't hurt their teams nearly as much as I do; basically I'm just good enough to get into position to make a lot of critical errors with the ball.  Last night I played in my first 3M league game of the season.  By default I sometimes end up being the primary ballhandler for that team, which anyone who has played with me knows is not a good sign for my team, especially in a competitive game that might feature double-teams, half-court traps, skilled former high school guards, etc.  Every possession is a struggle for me to get the ball to the right spot to start the offense, primarily because I don't have a great handle and have blinders the size of legal pads when I'm trying to dribble away from pressure. We were down a point in last night's game with 15 seconds left.  I brought the ball up for our final possession, and rather than look for a teammate I put my head down and tried to get to the rack.  It almost worked, too, but then I lost control of the ball a bit and got tied up with two seconds left and the possession arrow pointing the other way.  Ballgame.  It was fucking awesome.  There's not much you can say when you do something like that.  It's not like it was the NBA Finals or anything, but there is just a sick feeling when you find yourself doing something you know is a mistake, and everybody watching you knows it's a mistake, and yet you continue to do it.  I'm getting to know that feeling very well on the basketball court. Even on the outside chance I was to improve my ballhandling skills, or my shooting, none of it's going to matter until I see the court better and play within my limitations.  The good news is those are learnable things.  The bad news is I'm 36, have played and watched basketball most of my life, and still haven't managed to learn them. 7:31:55 PM    Say what?[]

2000 Comes Up I voted today.  There were only two ballot initiatives, one for St. Paul Mayor and one for School Board.  The Mayoral choice was a bit agonizing for me.  Our choices are incumbent Randy Kelly, who ran as a Democrat in the last election even though many people believed he was really a Republican in Dem clothing (just like the last Mayor, a certain Norm Coleman, although Coleman actually formally switched parties).  Kelly's running as a Dem again this year, but he doesn't have the endorsement of the DFL (Dem) party here in Minnesota; that distinction goes to Kelly's opponent, Chris Coleman.  So we have, in name at least, two Democrats running against each other.  The agony comes from two factors.  One, Kelly chose to commit some kind of weird political suicide by endorsing Bush in 2006.  Whether he really believed in Bush or simply thought Bush was a good horse to hitch his wagon to doesn't really matter to me--either way it was a profoundly stupid move in a liberal town like St. Paul.  Normally, anybody who in any way expresses support or reverence for Bush in the political arena isn't going to get my support, but... There is a road by our house called Ayd Mill Road.  I won't go into all the details, but it's a hot-button issue that Randy Kelly is on the correct side of.  Basically, he wants to keep the road open and connected to I-35 and I-94 to keep traffic off of city streets and down on Ayd Mill Road.  An Environmental Impact Study was completed that showed pollution, noise and accidents all went down with Kelly's plan, but a lot of NIMBY resistance combined with soft-headed liberal ideology ("You can't build your way out of growth!") has sided with Kelly's opponent, who has pledged to...well, he hasn't pledged much, really, except that he's against Kelly's plan.  So I voted for the guy who endorsed Bush.  Believe me, it wasn't easy, but politics is local, right?  And it's my intersection that backs up for blocks when this road isn't used, and my air quality that suffers, and my kids who have to cross the streets with all those cars that could be driving on an already built but simply not connected road.  Of course that's the same attitude that fuels the NIMBYS I decry above, but when an EIS says you can reduce pollution, accidents and noise across the entire footprint of the road, and get federal matching funds for your trouble, to not do so is simply bad policy. I took Linus into the polling place with me, showed him the ballot, showed him how to mark it, showed him where to put your "I Voted" sticker.  I thought it was a good civics exercise.  In the car, I was explaining to him what an election is, that tonight they will take all the ballots from across the city and count them and in a national election they do that very same thing all in one day.  It's a pretty monumental undertaking, when you think about it.  Then I explained that whoever gets the most votes wins...usually. Aha!  I had to put that little "usually" in there at the end, didn't I?  I knew he would ask about that, and he didn't disappoint: "How does the person with the most votes not win the election?"  I explained the concept of the electoral college, how a narrow win in a certain state combined with a large loss in another state could add up to a person getting fewer votes but winning the election.  He thought it sounded crazy.  I told him I agreed completely. Here's the thing: I don't know if it's right or wrong to tell him about what I thought about 2000, but I don't see why I shouldn't, provided I keep the information basic.  I told him I disagreed with the 2000 election results. (I didn't mention that whole Florida or Supreme Court business.)  And then I also shared with him that I was still angry about it, that I thought it was a dark day in our country's history because I think George Bush is a bad president, the worst in our country's history.  He asked why other people like him, and I said one reason was that a lot of people think you should support the President no matter what mistakes they make, especially if our country is fighting in a war.  He didn't follow up on the war part, which I was thankful for. Is this wrong?  He's only six, after all.  I don't think I want to go through the whole litany of my complaints about the Bush Administration, but I think it's right and appropriate to discuss certain things, such as why it's wrong to lie to the country to start a war, or why it's bad to change laws that protect the enviornment to help companies that are already wealthy make even more money.  Those are my values.  If people can have their kids in sunday school essentially from birth, I think I can discuss my complaints with my country's leadership when my son is six.  Call it dogma, call it brainwashing, call it reality.  I don't care.  He's old enough to know what we think, and I don't want him to look back and wonder why his parents had no comment about what they thought was the Worst Administration in History.  When you care about something and you believe in what you are saying, you shouldn't have to bite your tongue or just get in line.  It's OK to think something other people don't think, and it's OK to speak out about it in the appropriate places, be they the voting booth, a public rally, the dinner table, or in the car on the way to pick up your younger sister from daycare. 5:44:46 PM    Say what?[]

© Copyright 2005 DH. Last update: 12/3/05; 5:33:32 PM.